CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY Annual Review 2013 Special 40th Anniversary Section: Feminist FutuRes A WArm ThAnk You! CSWS thanks the many individuals and organizations who have contributed funds, energy, and enthusiasm to CSWS over the past 40 years. You do make a difference! To support CSWS Call (541) 346-2262 or email [email protected] for more information. To send a check, mail to: Center for the Study of Women in Society 1201 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1201 csws.uoregon.edu From the center CENTER FOR THE STUDY This is a season of celebration and change for the Center for the Study of Women OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY in Society. We’re celebrating 40 years of feminist research, teaching, and activism at the University of Oregon with a three-day series of symposia, including a new documentary by CSWS’s Gabriela Martínez and Sonia De La Cruz about the founding of the center. In honoring our beginnings, we also pay tribute to the incredible support of our university partners. I am thankful to our many generous sponsors for helping us make this possible: the Sally Miller Gearhart Fund; Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; College of Arts and Sciences; University of Oregon Libraries; Oregon Humanities Center; School of Architecture and Allied Arts; Robert D. Clark Honors College; Office of Equity and Inclusion; Office for Research, Innovation and Graduate Education; Vice President of Academic Affairs; Center on Diversity and Community; School of Journalism and Communication; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; the Departments of English, Ethnic Studies, Romance Languages, Anthropology, Sociology, International Studies, Political Science, and Psychology; and the Comparative Literature journal (sponsors correct at time of printing). In terms of change, I will with some regret be stepping down as director at the end of this year. It has been my privilege to work with the committed, creative, and talented CSWS staff—without them, none of this would work—and the remarkable faculty Cover art: Painting by Miriam Johnson / courtesy of Ben Johnson. members and graduate students CSWS exists to support. But change is vital within an organization like CSWS, and new directors allow for new networks, connections, CSWS annual review OctOber 2013 and ideas to spark and catch fire. The center’s next director, Professor Michael Hames- 1201 University of Oregon García (see article on p. 24), is going to bring ideas, experiences, and talents to Eugene, OR 97403-1201 CSWS that are going to amaze, provoke, and delight all of us. I am so very pleased to (541) 346-5015 [email protected] be able to pass the baton into his very capable hands. csws.uoregon.edu — Carol Stabile, Director our miSSion Generating, supporting, and disseminating research on the contents complexity of women’s lives and the intersecting nature of gender identities and inequalities. 40th Special Section: Feminist Futures Funding Feminist Futures 2 Faculty and students affiliated with CSWS generate and share by Carol Stabile, Director, CSWS research with other scholars and educators, the public, policymakers, and activists. CSWS researchers come from a broad range of fields in For Love of a Feminist: Jane Grant, William Harris, and the “Fund” 4 arts and humanities, law and policy, social sciences, physical and life by Jenée Wilde, PhD candidate, Department of English (Folklore), UO sciences, and the professional schools. direCtor Carol Stabile Celebrating Forty Years: Anniversary Event details 8 aSSoCiate direCtor Gabriela Martínez Research Can Serve as the Anchor for Feminism’s Future 10 offiCe and eventS Coordinator Pamela Sutton aCCounting and grantS Peggy McConnell by Áine Duggan, President, National Council on Research for Women reSearCh diSSemination SpeCialiSt Alice Evans Collaboration as a Challenge and Opportunity in Higher Education 11 graduate teaChing felloWS Jenée Wilde; Bryce Peake by Yvette Alex-Assensoh, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, UO adviSory board lynn fujiwara, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s and Breaking with the Logic of a Botanical Graft 12 Gender Studies, and Director, Department of Ethnic Studies by Michael Hames-García, Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, UO margaret hallock, Professor Emerita and Director, Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics Women in STEM — a Wakeup Call 13 miriam abelson, PhD candidate, Sociology, and RIG Coordinator by Miriam Deutsch, Professor, Department of Physics, UO Representative michelle mcKinley, Associate Professor, School of Law, and RIG Activist Research and the Fight Against the Polluter-Industrial Complex 14 Coordinator Representative by Shannon E. Bell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Kentucky ellen Scott, Associate Professor, Sociology, and Director, Women’s and Gender Studies Is Feminist Poetry a Thing of the Past? 15 mary e. Wood, Professor, Department of English by Maggie Evans, PhD graduate, Department of English, UO CSWS Annual Review is published yearly by the Center for the 40 Years Strong: A Timeline of Feminist Research, Teaching, & Activism 16 Study of Women in Society. While CSWS is responsible for the content of the CSWS Annual Review, the viewpoints expressed Research & Columns in this publication are not necessarily those of the organization. Revolutionary Foodways: A Set of Paths and Practices 20 editorS Alice Evans, Carol Stabile by Courtney Thorsson, Assistant Professor, Department of English, UO layout & deSign Alice Evans Copyediting & proofing CSWS staff Change is Slow to Come for Women in Zimbabwe 21 printing UO Printing Services by Easther Chigumira, PhD candidate, Department of Geography, UO The University of Oregon is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Experience, Confidence, & Vision 22 Americans with Disabilities Act. This publication will be made available in by Miriam Abelson, PhD candidate, Department of Sociology, UO accessible formats upon request. Teen Dating Violence and Effects of Mother-Daughter Communication 23 ©2013 University of oregon by Kali Lantrip, Department of Counseling Psychology, UO Highlights from the Academic Year 24 Looking at Books 28 csws.uoregon.edu 1 Funding Feminist Futures Financial support makes a world of difference by Carol Stabile, Director Center for the Study of Women in Society Professor, UO School of Journalism and Communication and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies RESEARCH IS A FunnY THInG, I’ve learned over years of working with graduate students and faculty members. Never a one-size-fits-all process, it’s rarely straightforward, especially when it comes to inter- disciplinary work that needs to reckon with scholarship and perspec- tivesR other than those of the scholar’s home discipline. The work of interdisciplinary feminist researchers is made even more complex because of the need to grapple with relations of power, like gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and other dimensions of oppression too long to list, but that make for deadly combinations. Think of it this way: you’re researching how “Ugly Laws” (ordi- nances that made it illegal for persons with “unsightly or disgusting” disabilities to appear in public) affected women in San Francisco, California. The problem with this formulation is, as gender scholars have argued over the past thirty years, laws like this affected different groups of women in very distinct ways, depending on race, ethnicity, class, and ability. In order to do justice to the research question, then, the researcher needs to look at relationships among gender and race Science fiction is one of Carol Stabile’s areas of research. She will be teaching a and ethnicity and class and ability, if she wants to understand how course on feminist science fiction during AY 2013-14 / photo by Alice Evans. these ordinances affected this diverse, unwieldy category of “women.” Even if she narrows the focus further—perhaps with a concentration don’t quietly thank Jane Grant and her husband, William Harris, for on Chinese women—she still needs to have a sense of how the laws their gift that makes the work of CSWS possible. affected other groups of women in order to evaluate the specific impact on Chinese women. The impact of the Harris gift is also difficult to assess. I could tell you that we’ve funded over two million dollars worth of grants. It might help to think of this by way of another analogy. When I could tell you that CSWS grantees have gone on to publish dozens Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1962), the book of books, secured multimillion-dollar grants at UO and elsewhere, galvanized attempts to ban DDT, a pesticide toxic to many birds and and won numerous awards. I could tell you stories about faculty mammals. Years ago, environmental activists often focused on a single awardees, like anthropologist Lynn Stephen, who used her funding to chemical and its effects. But today, they understand that what they conduct research that was published as a book in 2005, titled Zapotec need to be studying—in all its complexity—are not single causes, but Women: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Globalized Oaxaca. I could the relationships among chemical compounds, which interact with one share the words of professor of French and vice provost of academic another and in ecosystems in intricate and tricky ways. affairs Barbara Altmann, who expressed her gratitude for the support If we think about discrimination and oppression as forms of social a CSWS grant gave her “at a crucial transition from associate to full pollution, we can carry this analogy further and say that twenty-first professor. The term off teaching it allowed gave me a chance to finish century feminist researchers and their allies need to be studying the that research despite becoming department head.” Or I could point to relationships among oppressions in their specific historical and cul- the work of historian Elizabeth Reis, whose 2004 CSWS grant funded tural contexts, a job that’s manifestly more complicated than previ- research for what became her influential book on intersex, Bodies in ous ways of knowing.